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Summary
Summary
The first installment in the Ava and Pip series, perfect for aspiring writers and anyone that loves palindromes and word play. Ava and Pip is a funny and heartfelt story of Ava, an outgoing girl who wants to help her sister come out of her shell, and become a writer when she grows up.
"A love letter to language."--The New York Times
Meet outgoing Ava Wren, a fun fifth grader who tries not to lose patience with her shy big sister. She can't understand why Pip is so reserved and never seems to make friends with others, and decides to use her writing talents to help her sister overcome her shyness. She writes a short story based on the girl that ruined her sister's birthday party ... but it doesn't quite go over like she wanted it to.
Can Ava and her new friend help Pip come out of her shell? And can Ava get out of the mess she has made, and really be a real writer like she always dreamed?
Great for parents, educators and librarians looking for:
A heartwarming read that has messages of sisterhood, identity, and friendship
Funny books for girls ages 9 to 12
A story that incorporates word play (especially palindromes!)
A story with a character wants to be a writer, perfect for aspiring young authors
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Family dynamics, friendship tangles, and finding one's voice are among the topics Weston (the Melanie Martin novels) deftly juggles in this diary-style series debut. Fifth-grade narrator Ava begins by sharing her discovery that her "word nerd" family's names are all palindromes: Mom is Anna, Dad is Bob, and her seventh-grader sister is Pip. Outgoing and candid, Ava resents that her parents dote on moody loner Pip: "I always end up feeling mad at her and bad for her at the same time." After the girls invited to Pip's birthday sleepover cancel to attend the girl-boy party thrown by Pip's new classmate Bea, Ava enters a writing contest with a story about a thinly veiled "Queen Bee." Rather than send the story in a mean-girl direction, Weston has Bea forgive Ava, and the two team up to help Pip overcome her shyness, helping deliver messages about prejudging others and being careful what one puts in print. Generous samplings of palindromes, similes, and a running emphasis on creative writing will excite readers who share Ava's affinity for wordplay. Ages 10-up. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In a series of diary entries spanning four months, bright and bubbly Ava, youngest in a family of self-professed "word nerds," describes her efforts to help her painfully shy older sister develop a social life. In the process, she makes a new friend herself. Ava's journey toward a more mature awareness of her own feelings--and those of others--makes for infectious reading. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
The author of The Diary of Melanie Martin (2001) is back with another diary-style novel about word-loving sisters. Ava and Pip are word nerds, and Ava uses her power with language to write a story for a library contest. However, the inspiration for her story, a girl who seemingly steals all of Pip's friends at her birthday party, gets her into trouble. Turns out that Ava's Aesop-like fable isn't fictional enough to be forgotten by Bea, the story's main character, or her family. While Ava was just trying to stand up for her shy sister, she ends up learning a big lesson about creative license. Readers will relate to Ava's situation, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons to protect her sister. But it is how she remedies the situation with Bea's help that will have readers cheering. Fans of diary-style novels will enjoy this story, and readers who love to play with words will be searching for more palindromes.--Erickson, Tiffany Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN LITERATURE, as in life, sisters are always compared with one another. There's the smart one and the pretty one. The shy one and the one who gets invited everywhere. Older sisters are supposed to know better, while younger ones are usually up to something. Little sisters tend to feel left out. Who can forget Amy March tossing Jo's manuscript into the fire because she wasn't invited to the play? Or Ramona Quimby baking her doll into Beezus' birthday cake? In "Ava and Pip," Carol Weston flips the script. When their mother utters that familiar phrase - you should have invited your sister - she is speaking to Ava, who at 10 is two years younger than Pip. Pip is socially awkward and painfully shy. Ava is outgoing and fearless, with lots of friends. She's even taller by two and a half inches. (Pip was born premature.) Through Ava's diary entries, Weston perfectly captures the complexities of sisterhood: "I always end up feeling mad at her and bad for her all at the same time," Ava confesses. But she loves that Pip remembers things about her that even she doesn't. And she's quick to defend her sister at school, though she knows better than anyone how annoying Pip can be. In an attempt to improve Pip's social life, the family plans an elaborate slumber party for her birthday. At the last minute, all the guests cancel to attend a boy-girl party hosted by Bea Bates, the new girl in class. Pip is crushed. Ava, incensed, writes a story about it, "Sting of the Queen Bee," which wins an honorable mention in the school library contest. At first, Ava is proud, but as Bea herself later points out, the problem "is that once you put stuff in words, you can't take it back." THE OFT-REPEATED TITLE of Ava's Story recalls Rosalind Wiseman's popular parenting guide "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and the New Realities of Girl World," the basis for the movie "Mean Girls." But in Weston's Girl World, for the most part, kids solve their own problems. Adults can sometimes be opaque. While Bea confronts Ava and quickly forgives her, Bea's mother holds a grudge. Ava's own mother seems almost unaware of her existence. Seeming to favor Pip, she ignores Ava's good grades and her jokes at the dinner table. She gives Pip an allowance, but Ava has to take the garbage out for nothing. Weston, who has written the "Dear Carol" column in Girls' Life magazine since 1994, has lots of experience with the troubles of middle graders. In "Ava and Pip," she tackles some tough subjects, but her tale has a sunny quality. Characters change for the better. Everyone is dealt a lot of compassion; even the mean girls aren't all that mean. As Ava joins forces with Bea to help Pip overcome her shyness, Weston vicariously offers tips to shy readers. Bea, an aspiring advice columnist, devises a step-by-step plan for Pip to follow. Without too much resistance, Pip complies. This changes things for her, and for Ava. This is a book about sisterhood, but it's also a love letter to language. Bea's parents own a bookstore, and at one point Ava writes in her diary, "Observation: When you buy books online, it's not cozy, there are no homemade decorations, and a cat never comes by to rub your legs." Though perhaps this sounds more like the voice of Weston, the author of 12 books, than it does a 10-year-old girl, it's indicative of a passion for reading that permeates the novel. Ava's father is a playwright, and she too is a budding writer with all the marks of a pro - self-doubt, writer's block, the sensation of getting lost in another world, and an inherited fascination with words. Ava's descriptions are wonderfully wrought. She describes one of Pip's bullies as "stocky with a starter mustache," and notes to herself that "when you try to forget something, you usually remember it extra." The entire family is obsessed with wordplay. Palindromes are their specialty (thus the girls' names) and they often compete to see who can come up with the best ones. Reading the final pages of "Ava and Pip" one night, I wondered if children really talk this way. Out walking my dog the next morning, I overheard a young girl tell a joke Pip tells Ava: "Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ATE nine." This elicited big laughs from the girl's friend. Or perhaps it was her sister. J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN is the author, most recently, of the novel "The Engagements."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Ava is a spirited fifth grader and aspiring writer. Her sister Pip is a painfully shy seventh grader. Ava loves her sister, but gets frustrated with her awkwardness and the amount of parental attention she gets because of it ("I know Pip isn't shy on purpose, but it still gets me mad.") Pip's birthday party is derailed when a popular new girl, Bea, moves to town and hosts a party on the same night. Indignantly, Ava writes a story, "Sting of the Queen Bee." When her story is honored in a library contest, it goes public. Rather than start a mean-girl battle, Bea and Ava are honest with each other about their hurt feelings, and team up to help draw Pip out of her shell. They are so successful that Ava then has to adjust to the shift in family dynamics. The story is told through Ava's diary entries, which bear sign offs such as "Ava the annoying," "Ava, abandoned?," and "Ava amazed." Her writing is filled with palindromes and wordplay. Some of the musings may be more sophisticated than realistic for a fifth grader, but they they are so clever, and her voice is so charming that it's a pleasure to forgive. The relationships between all the girls are tender and realistic while the adults are caring and involved. The story has just enough conflict to keep the pages flying, with the comfortable certainty that it will all work out.-Amelia Jenkins, Juneau Public Library, AK (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Weston sums up her new diary-style middle-grade novel when lively 10-year-old Ava writes that she hopes someday to write a book about "a good kid who does a bad thing and sometimes feels invisible, but who helps her sister find her voice and ends up finding her own." Ava, a budding writer and class-A speller, is outgoing and chatty. Her sister, Pip, who turns 13 during the story, is so shy she's virtually silent. When Pip's birthday plans for a girls sleepover are derailed by new classmate Bea's boy-girl party, Ava pens a story maligning her as an entry in a library writing contest. Ava's "word nerd" family revels in language, particularly palindromes and homonyms. In fact, they pepper the narrative, so much so that their use at times undercuts the material's narrative flow. Besides delighting, Ava learns that words can influence feelings and reputation. After Bea recognizes herself in the story, Ava realizes her mistake and sincerely apologizes. In a refreshing plot twist, instead of staying mad, Bea teams up with Ava to aid Pip in coming out of her shell. Ava is a winning protagonist, a little too articulate for her age perhaps, but she and Pip grow psychologically in realistic and convincing ways. "Helping others helps you too" is Weston's essential message, and her story ably illustrates the point. (Fiction. 8-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
9/2
BEDTIME
DEAR NEW DIARY,
You won't believe what I just found out.
Fifth grade started today, and my homeroom has three Emilys but only one Ava, so at dinner, I asked Mom and Dad why they named me Ava.
Innocent question, right?
Well, Dad answered: "We like palindromes."
"Palinwhat?" I said.
"Palindromes," Dad replied, passing the salad. "Words that are the same backward and forward."
"Like M-O-M," Mom said.
"And D-A-D," Dad said.
"And P-I-P," Pip chimed. Apparently she knew all about this. "And H-A-N-N-A-H," she added. That's Pip's middle name.
My full name is Ava Elle Wren. When people ask what the L stands for, they expect me to say Lily or Lauren or Louise, but I say, "It's not L, it's E-L-L-E."
I thought about P-I-P, H-A-N-N-A-H, A-V-A, and E-L-L-E, and stared at my parents. "You chose our names because of how they're spelled? Wow." Then I noticed how you spell "wow" (W-O-W).
And suddenly it was as if I saw the whole world-or at least the Whole World of Words-in a brand-new way.
My parents' names are Anna and Bob (A-N-N-A and B-O-B), and they are word nerds.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" I asked.
"You never asked," Dad answered.
"When did you tell Pip?"
"A while ago," Mom said, "when she asked."
Pip looked at me and shrugged. "At least we didn't get named after Nana Ethel."
Pip is twelve-for one more month. She talks at home, but at school, she is extremely shy. Pip was a preemie, which means she was born early. Since our last name is Wren, which is the name of a bird, Mom and Dad sometimes call her Early Bird.
When Pip was little, they worried about her a lot. To tell you the truth, they still worry about her a lot. They also pay way more attention to her than to me. I try not to let it bother me...but it kind of does. I'm only human.
"Guess who was the first woman in the world?" Pip asked.
"Huh?" I replied, then noticed how "huh" (H-U-H) is spelled.
"Eve," Pip said. "E-V-E!"
Dad jumped in. "And guess what Adam said when he saw Eve?"
"What?" I said, totally confused.
"Madam, I'm Adam!" Dad laughed.
"Another palindrome!" Mom explained. "M-A-D-A-M-I-M- A-D-A-M."
"A whole sentence can be a palindrome?" I asked.
"Yes." Dad pointed to Mom's plate. "Like, 'Ma has a ham!'"
Pip spelled that out: "M-A-H-A-S-A-H-A-M."
I put down my fork, looked from my S-I-S to my M-O-M to my P-O-P, and started wondering if other people's families are as nutty as mine. Or is mine extra nutty? Like, chunky-peanut-butter nutty?
A-V-A
Excerpted from Ava and Pip by Carol Weston All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.